Hi, I’m Andrew Gibbons, Head of Sponsorship at Sky Betting & Gaming. Since 2018 our Sky Bet brand has sponsored the English Football League (EFL) — and we’re proud to say it’s the first football sponsorship that’s truly put Safer Gambling at its heart.
The relationship between football and gambling is a widely-debated topic. Sky Bet’s activation of the sponsorship, with Safer Gambling at its core, has shown that the two worlds can work hand-in-hand to deliver an important message to players, fans and all of those involved in football.
In August 2018 we launched our first season-long Safer Gambling education scheme, which delivered training to educate players, coaching staff, academies and club staff on the dangers associated with gambling.
The training was put in place as professional sportspeople are six times more likely to suffer from gambling-related harm. Why? Because, in general, they have three key things: time, money and a will to win.
The training, which was delivered by EPIC Risk Management, used former sportspeople who had suffered gambling-related harm to show players the dangers. This was coupled with an internally-developed gambling spectrum to help players and staff understand their gambling in a simple way.
We’re now in the second season of the education sessions where the programme has been developed to focus more on betting integrity and how we, at Sky Betting & Gaming, spot suspicious activity in football. The sessions receive great feedback — from footballers at academy level to those in the first team.
Across our entire EFL inventory, we have focused only on delivering communication that promotes Safer Gambling messages. Across 1,600 matches, we committed our round-the-pitch advertising, goal branding, big screen adverts and programme adverts to promote our ‘Simple Tools’.
Lastly, we’ve donated the sleeve badge that sits on every shirt worn by players in every EFL match to the key message: When the fun stops, stop.